The World Has Changed by Alice Walker

different from what they perceive the mainstream feeling to be. So I do have friends who just couldn’t imagine what I was talking about—“You talk to these animals? Isn’t that weird?” But now, of course, they talk to them too. So I don’t give up on them, and I don’t give up on myself either.
     
    E.B.: The animal liberation movement is about compassion. Yet, compassion for the self is often the hardest to show.
     
    A.W.: Yes, because we love to be perfect or even just vastly better now. But, as long as I feel I’m moving, I won’t despair. I think this need of ours to be better than we are sometimes prevents change. It prevents us from acting.
    For instance, I agonized a long time over whether I should write the article about Blue because I felt that I could only really take this position and express and share the way I feel about him as a fellow being if I was already a vegetarian. I kept asking myself how can I dare to presume to say this if I am not already at the point where I want to take people. I finally answered by saying to myself that I have the responsibility to share the vision even if I am not already in the vision. There’s value in sharing the process. You want to encourage people by appearing as if you have it all together, but I frankly feel it’s better to share that you don’t because that’s the truth and that’s the reality. Nobody has it all together.
     
    E.B.: Being vulnerable in that way often makes it easier for other people to begin their own process.
     
    A.W.: Absolutely! It also makes it easier for them to share their process. I have gotten tons of cookbooks, letters, testimonials—I think I’ve heard from half the vegetarians in the world!
    At times, I question my 10 percent of chicken and fish, but then I think it’s okay because it is the truth. It’s where I am and I’m glad to be
there. Given my background of meat three times a day, this represents such a leap in consciousness.
     
    E.B.: Was it hard to move away from that?
     
    A.W.: Not really, although every month I would get a real chicken attack. I wrote about an incident when I was in Bali that is helping me a lot to deal with my chicken problem. One day, I was walking across the road with my daughter and my companion. It was raining and we were trying to get home. I looked down and there was this chicken with her little babies. They were trying to get home too. It was one of those times feminists refer to as a “click.” Well, this was one of those human animal–to–nonhuman animal clicks, where it just seemed so clear to me how one we are. I was a mother. She was a mother. And she was trying to get those little brats across the street. They were not cooperating and she was just fussing and carrying on.
    I feel I’ve been having a lot of help.
     
    E.B.: What do you think about the argument that vegetarianism violates cultural traditions and rituals and, therefore, is racist or imperialist?
     
    A.W.: You mean if people have been killing pigs forever, you should let them keep doing that and not mention that the pig has something to say? No, I don’t think that’s a good argument.
    Slavery was an intrinsic part of southern heritage. Propertied white people loved having slaves. That was something they were all used to and they even fought a war to keep them. But that view did not take into account the desires of the slaves, who didn’t want to be slaves. In the same way, animals don’t want to be eaten.
     
    E.B.: There seems to be an emphasis in the current animal liberation movement on male-defined philosophy and science, and on male academicians—even though women are the backbone of the movement. Emotions are for “little old ladies in tennis shoes,” but not for a sophisticated movement that’s to be taken seriously. However, in her article “Dominance and Control,” author Gene Corea discusses the necessity of dismantling patriarchy and sounds a warning to women that we
“betray ourselves